Welcome to our September/October 2025 issue, one that finds many of us trying to avoid isolation during growingly troubling times where the art and cultural togetherness we’ve worked to nourish and support seems challenged more than at any other time in our lives.
We’ve always found art to be one of our major common denominators and you can’t put a price on the value of interaction at openings or browsing through an exhibition. This time of year is especially supportive of these activities, with seasonal art fairs and open studio weekends providing plenty of opportunities to get out and explore your art wanderlust.
The SoWa District in Boston’s South End is one of those places, with its monthly First Friday events, Sunday SoWa Open Air Farmers and Artist Market — during which many of the adjoining galleries and artist studios are open — and the South End Open Studios on the weekend of September 20 and 21, which promises, as always, to be wonderfully overwhelming.
Longtime Boston Sculptors Gallery member Andy Moerlein previews the first Affordable Art Fair Boston taking place in late October at the SoWa Power Station, an event he expects will attract people to Boston’s South End who not only may have never visited one of its galleries but never attended an art-themed event of any capacity.
This issue contains powerful stories and imagery.
Eric J. Taubert shares an incredible conversation with Wayne Millerabout his time as a medic during the 22nd Casualty Staging Flight in Da Nang during the Vietnam War prior to the opening reception for his “Kintsugi Paintings: Paintings in the Narrative Tradition” exhibition at Miller White Fine Arts in South Dennis on Cape Cod. Miller described how immersing himself in the study of the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi — the repairing of broken pottery — slowly helped him repair his own soul after his war experiences.
Lexie Gondek brings us to a more modern Vietnam through her preview of the “Vietnam: Tradition Upended” exhibition being presented in collaboration with the Art Vietnam Gallery of Hanoi beginning September 18 at the Flinn Gallery at the Greenwich Library in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Two solo photography shows give us in-depth insight into lives that we might never otherwise cross paths with. Erica DeMatos shares a look at the lives of South Korean families through the documentary photography of Jung Yeondoo’s “Building Dreams” at the Peabody Essex Museum while Memphis-born Tommy Kha’s “Other Things Uttered” at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy is previewed, and the question of what personal photographs really reveal is ponderedby J.M. Belmont.
Isabel Barbi visited Northeastern University’s Gallery 360 to viewHannah Perrine Mode’s “Remote Sensing,” a collection of images documenting rapid glacial melting in Alaska and a reminder of our need to pay attention to the environmental changes affecting our climate and as a result, our everyday lives.
Beth Neville visited the studio of Marshfield, Massachusetts-based Jared Hadfield to see his unique modern art furniture pieces that will be on display in his “Structure to Sculpture” exhibition that opens September 12 at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, Massachusetts.
If you take to roads of New England to leap peep this fall, consider combining your trip with a visit to one or two of these groups shows in the region reviewed in this issue:
“Love and Practice,” an out-of-the-box exhibition on view through September 26 at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury, Vermont pairs artworks by staff members at the nearby Vermont Studio Center with clothing worn by the artists while they create, the results of which are reviewed by Marta Pauer-Tursi.
“Green Mountain Magic: Uncanny Realism in Vermont” explores the Magic Realism Movement of the mid-1900s in which the associated artists created “realistic representations of the everyday which are at the same time numinous, fantastical, or deeply symbolic,” notes Carolyn Wirth, writing about the show on view at Vermont’s Bennington Museum.
“Quirky, courageously creative, and surely a professional challenge for the artists,” writes Linda Sutherland, who got an early peek at “Strange Kin,” a five-woman show whose artists were encouraged to create a microscopic view into the lives of bugs and insects that revealed their true magnificence at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
Curator Archy LaSalle hopes that his “WHERE ARE ALL THE BLACK PEOPLE AT: IN PLAIN SIGHT” exhibition at the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society (LexArt) that showcases some of Boston’s young outstanding and creative photographers will lead to museum curators making space for these Black and Brown artists in their own institution’s permanent collections. The show is previewed by Madeleine Lord.
Sawyer Smook-Pollitt looks at the expanding genre of mosaics in reviewing the Art Complex Museum’s “New England Mosaic Society: Ten Years on the Cutting Edge” exhibition that curator Craig Bloodgoodsaid is, “pushing boundaries, embracing innovation, and reflecting the complexities of the world around us.”
Claudia Fiks visited Wen-Hao Tien (“Flight Lessons”) and Ellen Schon(“Loftings”), whose “two compelling solo exhibitions exploring the boundaries of material, form, and imagination” can be seen this September at the Boston Sculptors Gallery.
Donald Beal will be this year’s Provincetown Art Association and Museum Party Honoree for Artistic Excellence on October 4; an exhibition celebrating his career will be on view at PAAM from September 19 through October 19, right on the heels of the closing of a current show at Berta Walker Gallery. Lee Roscoe celebrates his paintings of “delicious light and colors” with a look at his far-from-over career.
After seeing Vincent Valdez’s powerful “Just a Dream” exhibition at Mass MoCA, Marjorie Kaye wrote that, “Bringing the feelings it generates to the surface is incredibly significant to me and definitely challenging.” Between Valdez’s images and Kaye’s words, you’ll see why she writes that via this 20-year survey of his work, Valdez joins American social realist and protest painters such as Ben Shahn, Jacob Lawrence, Thomas Hart Benton, Arnold Trachtman, and Faith Ringgold.
I was happy to preview both the Guild of Boston Artists’ “Annual New England Regional Juried Exhibition” and Robin Frisella’s “Beauty in the Stillness” solo show. It was a much needed reminder of how much work a painter puts in to capture the complexity of life, be it the human face, the buildings, wildlife and landscapes around us or decaying artifacts of our past through their carefully selected collection of materials to convey their own personal experiences in looking to connect with us visually and soulfully.
Our publisher, Kavah Mojtabai, has been on the road this summer, visiting the Maine Crafts Association’s Portland Craft Fair, story painting artist Don Cadoret in his home studio in Tiverton, Rhode Island during the South Coast Artists Open Studio Weekend and Mount Sunapee Resort for the opening reception for the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s 93rd Annual Craftsmen Fair in Newbury, New Hampshire.
Back in 2014, then Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick proposed funding for maker spaces, collaborative workspaces and incubators that would help to boost the state’s creative economy.
In this issue, #ArtStaysHere’s Ami Bennitt surveys the state’s Maker Spaces, specifically Tinkerhaus Community Makerspace in Gloucester, Artisans Asylum in Allston, LaunchSpace in Orange, and LowellMakesand Technotopia in Worcester.
As we were finalizing this issue, we learned that Artscope Magazinewas accepted to participate at Art Basel Paris, which is scheduled to take place from October 26 through 28. Attendees will be able to pick up a copy of this issue in the Magazines Sector. It’s another way we strive to bring the region’s artists, artwork and art institutions to the attention of the world in which we live.
Like everything else, that comes at a price. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to print and distribute each issue of Artscope Magazine throughout New England and we wouldn’t mind if venues who carry the issue were able to assist us with those costs.
If you’re a regular Artscope reader visiting regional museums and art centers, and you don’t see our latest issue there, please let them know that you use us as an important source of information. Please encourage them to contact us and partner with us to promote their exhibitions.
Readers can support us through an annual subscription to get the magazine in hard copy form via the mail or through purchasing online access through our website, artscopemagazine.com.
As we near our 20th anniversary, Artscope Magazine continues to explore new ways to expand our coverage and to reach new readers. Thanks for continuing on this amazing artistical journey with us.